The Politics of Science and Undone Protection in the “Samsung Leukemia” Case

Abstract

A labor health dispute between a multinational corporation and patient-workers in Korea received enormous attention from 2007 to 2018, when it was finally and successfully resolved. Sick workers of Samsung Semiconductor claimed they were contaminated by toxic chemicals at their workplace that resulted in their sickness, a contested illness known as “Samsung leukemia.” In this dispute, the Korean government and Samsung used epistemological studies to deny the workers’ claims. The patient-workers politicized the industrial disease, forming a labor health movement that advocated for workers’ rights and welfare. In this long disputed process, they developed their own bottom-up science that collected evidence from their factories and connected this evidence with the claims of counter-experts. They made done “undone science,” which investigated the relationship between the unknown disease and the semiconductor industry. But the undone science has been constructed in the context of “undone protection” stemming not only from chemical exposure in factories that weigh profit over safety but also from institutional failures to protect and compensate the loss of workers’ lives and health. The successful resolution of the “Samsung leukemia” case depended on a health movement that worked toward getting undone science and undone protection done simultaneously.

• labor health movement
• political economy of labor health
• “Samsung leukemia”
• semiconductor industry
• undone protection
• undone science

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions in response to earlier drafts. We also acknowledge many colleagues and peers who have helped us develop the work presented here, especially Hsin-hsing Chen, Wen-Hua Kuo, Yi-Ping Lin, Wen-Ling Tu, Paul Jobin, and Kim Fortun, among many others. We also express our gratitude to Domyung Paek, Jeong-ok Kong, Chungsik Yoon, Jinjoo Chung, and Taesun Kang for providing valuable comments on our work. This work was supported by a grant from Kyung Hee University in 2016 (KHU-20160693).

Notes

¹ The term Samsung leukemia is used in this article because the term is used widely by the media and the public in Korea; it also is relatively concise and conveys the meaning well. This movement, spearheaded by the Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry (SHARPS), was triggered when workers at Samsung semiconductor factories made an issue out of suffering from leukemia, but it came to include other cancers and rare illnesses as the number of patient-workers grew. Depending on the context, this term may be used interchangeably with semiconductor industry disease or electronics industry disease. However, the phrase Samsung leukemia is put in quotation marks because this illness is contested.

² The framework in Figure 1 is partially indebted to Philip Brown’s (2007: 25) framework of the public paradigm in health movements. It shows the importance of getting undone science and undone protection done in labor health disputes.

³ Article 34, clause 1, of the Enforcement Decree of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act determines the criteria for acknowledging an occupational illness as follows: (1) the worker has an experience of handling or being exposed to a harmful or dangerous factor in the process of carrying out job tasks; (2) it is acknowledged that it is possible to cause the illness suffered by the worker based on the period of time of handling or being exposed to the harmful or dangerous factor, the length of time working in the position, work environment, and so on; and (3) it is medically acknowledged that the illness was caused by the worker being exposed to or handling the harmful or dangerous factor.

⁴ The concept of proximate causal relation (adäquanztheorie, adequacy theory) was suggested by a German scholar, Johannes von Kries, in 1888. Proximate causal relation is not a unique concept in judging occupational disease but a general concept widely used in the legal sphere. This concept has been debated for a long time because of its ambiguous and multiple meanings (Lee 2003).

⁵ Total compensation amounts to ₩50bn (approximately US$44m). Because the dispute included such diverse diseases as leukemia, cancers, stillbirths, and genetic disorders, the committee set guidelines on the amount of compensation, and both Samsung and SHARPS agreed to them. For example, the maximum compensation for leukemia is ₩150m (US$130,000), and for cancer it is ₩100m (US$88,000). If a child of a patient-worker develops a genetic disorder, Samsung has agreed to pay ₩5m (US$4400) initially and up to ₩3m ($2,600) every year thereafter until the disorder is cured. For detailed compensation guidelines, see Samsung and SHARPS (2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jongyoung Kim

Jongyoung Kim is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He has published three books: Dominated Dominators: American Degrees and the Birth of Korean Elites (2015, Korean Sociological Association Book of the Year); The Birth of Intelligent Citizens: The Challenge of Civic Intelligence toward Knowledge Democracy (2017, winner of the Sejong Book Award); and Hybrid Korean Medicine: Modernity, Power, and Creation (2019, winner of the National Academy of Sciences Book Award). His research interests include STS, globalization and education, sociology of knowledge, and medical anthropology.

Heeyun Kim

Heeyun Kim is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. She has authored several articles on semiconductor industry diseases, including the “Samsung leukemia” case. Her research interests include feminist STS, labor movements, and ethnography.

Jawoon Lim

Jawoon Lim is a lawyer and research associate at the Center for Science, Technology, and Society, Kyung Hee University, South Korea. As a key member of Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry (SHARPS), he has supported and represented victims and their families in courts, at the negotiating table, and on the street for many years. His research interests include labor law, STS, and social movements.